The Afridi bowling Uganda to a brighter tomorrow

Peter Della Penna is an American cricket journalist who also writes for ESPNcricinfo.com and DreamCricket.com. Since 2010, he has penned the USA entry in the Cricket Round the World section of the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack.Follow Peter on Twitter @PeterDellaPenna

At the top of his mark stands a man called Afridi. The wily legspinner struts in, whirls through his action, left arm swinging through first and ending fully extended to create a beautiful straight line in sync with his left leg, pirouetting à la Mikhail Baryshnakov on the crease. The right hand with his rubbery wrist gives the ball its snappy revolutions out of the hand, with an extra bit of action imparted with a flick of the fingers.

Seeing how his team-mates have failed to keep Afridi from knocking back the stumps while trying to defend him on the front foot and the back foot, the batsman tries to attack with a sweep, but the skiddy pace is too quick for the shot and the ball hits the pad. A deep-throated "Howzat!" is roared. The umpire's finger goes up, and Afridi strikes an unmistakable starfish pose, both arms hoisted up and out at a 60-degree angle, index fingers pointed to the sky in triumph.

Everything looks so familiar… except the receding hairline, and the yellow jersey. This isn't the elder statesman with a full, Grecian-formula black mane, wearing green with the gold star over the heart for Pakistan. It's a slightly younger - albeit balding - man dressed in bright yellow with black-and-red trim, and a crane stamped over his heart for Uganda. This Afridi is the 33-year-old Irfan, bowling his adopted homeland into a promotion slot to climb up the World Cricket League ladder so that one day he might be able to play in a World Cup just like his more heralded uncle Shahid.

Since making his international debut against Qatar at Nairobi in September 2016, Afridi has quickly emerged as a devastating match-winner. Perhaps not since Kenneth Kamyuka, the star medium-pace allrounder of the 2000s, has Uganda possessed a talent that can pose a threat to higher-ranked Associate opposition. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Afridi says he never played a game of hard-ball cricket in his life until moving to Uganda in early 2013, at the age of 28.

"The whole time in Karachi, I didn't play hard ball. Just tape ball, tennis ball," Afridi tells ESPNcricinfo. If that's not enough of an obstacle to making an international debut, consider that Afridi barely played any cricket of any kind during his prime years of 24 to 28 because he was doing electrical wiring for a business in Seoul, South Korea. He might still be there today if his uncle Mushtaq, Shahid's younger brother, didn't have plans for a new venture in Kampala.

"My uncle wanted to start a business in Uganda so that's why he told me to go to Uganda," Afridi says. "My uncle sent me here for business. We started a business for import and exporting cars. So from there I started my cricket. I never played hard ball in my life before. I started in Uganda."

Irfan Afridi does the starfish in homage to his uncle after taking a wicket Peter Della Penna

Uganda's East African neighbor Kenya may be considered by most to have a much richer cricket history, thanks to five straight World Cup appearances beginning in 1996 including a trip to the semi-finals in 2003, but Uganda has its share of achievements as well. A little-known fact is that a pair of Ugandans debuted in the World Cup long before anyone from Ireland or Afghanistan. John Nagenda and Sam Walusimbi opened the bowling and batting respectively for East Africa - a squad comprising players from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia - against New Zealand on the first day of the inaugural tournament at Edgbaston in 1975.

Afridi knew nothing of this, let alone much else to do with Ugandan cricket culture, before arriving to work on behalf of his uncle Mushtaq, but before long he saw that cricket was plentiful in a healthy club scene. Former Ugandan pace bowler Asadu Seiga was friendly with Afridi, and invited him to come play a leather-ball match for the first time for Seiga's club Tornado CC.

"I played one game for his club. From there I started my career," Afridi says. "When I played the first game, from there they saw me. My friend Asadu told me, 'You can play hard ball. So why are you not trying?' So from there I started to play. Then I tried to come into the national team.

"He was the one who brought me in. Every time he was telling me, 'Afridi do that. Push yourself, work hard. You will get a chance. I want to see you in a yellow national-team jersey for Uganda.' So he helped me a lot."

Seiga may have helped Afridi get exposure locally, but Afridi has helped Uganda in a big way at recent tournaments. At WCL Division Four in Malaysia this past May, his mystery spin - "80% legspin, 10% offspin and 10% carom balls", as he puts it - produced a tournament-best 15 wickets to propel Uganda to the tournament title. He followed that up at the ICC World T20 Africa T20 Region B Qualifier with another tournament-best haul of 13 wickets to help Uganda progress to the next phase of qualifying.

"He's been bowling well, and has the ball he pushes with his finger and it's not easy to play it," Uganda captain Roger Mukasa says about Afridi's variations. "People have been struggling with it a lot. His performance is so big for the team and he works hard. He's played a big role in the team especially in bowling. He's the guy who gets wickets for us and batting, he can hit the ball far."

Though bowling is his main weapon, Afridi is also capable of producing blistering batting cameos in the middle order just like his uncle. At 2017 WCL Division Three in Uganda, he clobbered an unbeaten 108 off 71 balls featuring 10 sixes in a win over Malaysia while his 51 off 17 balls against Vanuatu at Division Four got Uganda out of a sticky situation to lift them to another win.

Afridi's success is also significant due to the turbulent history of the Asian population in Uganda, who were mostly driven out by Idi Amin in 1972, early in the dictator's reign. Only in recent years have Asian cricketers been accepted into the national team, and Afridi says he owes a huge debt of gratitude to the support shown to him by captain Mukasa, vice-captain Brian Masaba, and senior spinner Frank Nsubuga.

"Every time they push me and they help me, just saying, 'We are with you, we are with you. Push yourself, work hard.' Everyone in the team is with me and they help me a lot," Afridi says.

"They're saying I'm a good bowler and I'm playing for Uganda. I'm in the national team so from there they try to push me more. They help me and push me so that the more that I can do more for my country, for Uganda, I do more. So they help me a lot."

Aside from Seiga, Mukasa, Masaba and Nsubuga, Afridi has also been motivated in a peculiar way by uncle Shahid. The Pakistan international Shahid's career took off after a century in his first ODI innings against Sri Lanka as a 16-year-old in 1996, meaning he was hardly around while Irfan was growing up. Instead of getting hands-on tips, Irfan has taken to studying as much of his uncle's video footage as he can in order to improve his own game.

"I just watch him on TV," Afridi says. "The way he's bowling, the way he runs up, the batting style, just I'm following from the TV. Mostly I'm watching his videos on YouTube, so I'm picking from there.

"Now he knows I'm playing for Uganda. After the 17-ball 51 runs, he heard the news so I got a text message from him saying, 'Very well played.' I'm feeling very happy and appreciate it from my uncle."

As the start of WCL Division Three approaches in Oman, the starfish celebration may be ready to break out once again for Uganda. The jersey color might be a striking yellow instead of green and the hair a bit thinner on top, but there's little doubt about the match-winning impact of another Afridi in international cricket.